Obama's Space Policy - Good/Bad For NASA?

"The charm of Obama's plan is that it seeks to disentangle NASA from these vested interests. NASA will set the price and technical specifications of orbital launches and leave the details to private enterprise. It will be able to spread its eggs among many baskets rather than putting them in one. The plan thus fights the political pressures with the only force that might be more powerful: the profit motive. Space businesses have a strong incentive to buy equipment and hire people for their technical merit rather than because their congressional representative was able to bring home the bacon. That's one reason why Obama's plan met with so much opposition. Still, Congress ended up mostly going along with it--and that will help to let NASA be NASA."

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Defying Politics: Why the Obama Plan Is Good for NASA, Scientific American\n\n\"The charm of Obama's plan is that it seeks to disentangle NASA from these vested interests. NASA will set the price and technical specifications of orbital launches and leave the details to private enterprise. It will be able to spread its eggs among many baskets rather than putting them in one. The plan thus fights the political pressures with the only force that might be more powerful: the profit motive. Space businesses have a strong incentive to buy equipment and hire people for their technical merit rather than because their congressional representative was able to bring home the bacon. That's one reason why Obama's plan met with so much opposition. Still, Congress ended up mostly going along with it--and that will help to let NASA be NASA.\"

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